This Week in Learning: August 14th, 2015

Continuing to be excited about the learning that is happening this Term. Solid, consistent progress, lessons not only about King Alfred and Japan’s closure to the West but lessons about diligence and time management. A friend and I were chatting yesterday, we’re both long term home-educators with graduates and several children still to educate, we shared how when we were young and dewy-eyed we wanted our children to love learning, well we still do, truth is though, these days we’d settle for application. Actually a whole series in the making there once I’ve formulated my thoughts.

Speech Therapy I suspect the speech therapist twigged that I was not being consistent with homework here, ouch, so being quite the experienced teacher she devised a little chart for us. Five days work laid out in a grid, three small, achievable tasks for each day, as each is completed we place a sticker. This I can do, I have too or the teacher will know I haven’t, the stickers remember! Have cheated a little and older siblings have begged some days to do Bass’ speech lesson with him, go for it!

Last fortnight I received comments from you that this is an area many struggle with, and that you have several children in therapy, hugs of support and encouragement to you all. {{}}

Jack Jack nailed memorising the 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit with the help of a youtube, corny actions for each Gift but highly effective, alas I can’t find the link to share.

Jem has been struggling to remember his Act of Contrition, found Raising Little Saints printable, which alas is no longer available to print but I was able to copy and paste and with difficulty make some changes, as our Act is slightly different, so changed some words, added some clipart and he’d mostly ‘had it’ by recitation 3.

Jem is most likely making his First Confession this weekend, asking for prayers please, he is one nervous boy, mostly over his struggle to remember the Act of Contrition.

Jelly Bean read Stories to Learn By – Msgr John Koenig, a collection of stories imparting values and virtues in a natural manner. She has totally amazed me with how quickly her reading skill is progressing.

The children all worked rather hard on the maths lessons(Maths Online) this past fortnight and consequently pushed through some ‘barriers’ and started having ‘some wins’. Application can bring its own pleasure in learning, enjoyment of learning doesn’t always equate with fun but with achievement.

Kahn Academy has been an excellent choice for our non-interested science girl. Princess is now enjoying science!! This fortnight she watched lectures on scale: of the large, the small and the earth and sun and was most animated telling me about what she learnt.

JB and the boys enjoyed an afternoon of nature journal-ling, spontaneously organised and enacted by themselves. I love it when learning like this happens.

Geography

Read a couple of chapters from Our Friends from Other Lands to the boys yet realised we’re ‘going through the motions’, it’s not that engaging. Second week I borrowed a collection of picture books from various lands from the library and we enjoyed diving in. (see list below)

Read a couple of chapters of Story of the World Vol 2 to the boys and JB. We read about the Celts, the coming of the barbarians to Britain and Beowulf. We also learnt about St Augustine’s missionary work in Britain and the Christianizsation of Britain, medieval monasteries and the art of writing books by hand.

Feeling that SOTW is skimming too fast past huge chunks of history and as I’d like us to linger longer, I cast about for a more in-depth title. My dear friend R lent us Book 3 of the set The March of Time – Horniblow, just brilliant. This week we read about King Alfred and William the Norman Duke, whom we’d previously read about in Our Island Story – Marshall (another big hit) so it was great to recap. A little tricky to keep all those Kings in order whilst narrating but with JB’s help we managed.

Princess increased her Spanish fluencey to 46%, She continues to enjoy Spanish and her father continues to share that love with her:)

Creative Arts

Princess attended our local homeschool handcraft day and taught one of the younger girls how to finger knit.

Extra curricula of three dance classes for Princess and soccer games for Jelly Bean, Jack Jack and Jem still continuing.

Handwriting Continued with ‘handwriting on the board’ wherein the children gather with me, I demonstrate and they copy. The older boys and JB are focusing on cursive, Jem is working on his printing. Had a frustrating session with him in which he won’t take correction as to where he should start his letters. He was determined to begin his Rs at the bottom of the line, not at the top and wouldn’t budge.

Spelling Wisdom with our teens went well the first week, however we were slack the second. Resolving to focus on Language Arts with our teens first before I work with the younger children in future.

JB and JJ began using Spelling Wisdom for their dictation lessons too. They were rather nervous believing it too hard, which it isn’t at this stage, a little way in it does get much harder, so we shall see.

Grammar

JB and JJ – using Marist Brothers Grade 5, we focused on comprehension passages, which are a real challenge and pronouns, their person, number and gender.

Teens – synonyms and pairing nouns with their synonyms in the first week, using Ridout, in the second week we failed to do grammar, hence part of my resolve undertake Language Arts with our teens first.

Composition/Creative Writing

JB and JJ are weekly writing creative essays, each child brainstorms with me, I write on the board as they dictate and then they copy. Long gone are the days I believed in inventive spelling, what a disaster that was.

JJ read a couple of books to me(see below) sadly however he isn’t yet keen on reading, he only lacks practise and then he’ll be off ‘flying’. Consistency and perseverance is the key.

Jem completed AAR Level 1! We are now revising the cards, I was slack throughout the program and wasn’t always diligent in this area, Jem is very proud of the amount of cards he knows and he has every right to be proud.

Jem is still keen to ‘read’ and we found a couple of books for him to have a ‘go at’, most impressed (see below)